After winning more than $3 million in federal and state financing, Olympic Community Action Programs is hoping to break ground on a new affordable housing project in Port Townsend by fall of 2020.
The plan is to build 43 apartments in a new building located at 7th and Hendricks Street in the Castle Hill neighborhood of Port Townsend, according to a press release from OlyCAP. The project will include six studio apartments, 18 one-bedroom apartments, 15 two-bedroom apartments and four three-bedroom apartments.
“It’s a drop in the bucket given the number of homes we need,” said Mayor Michelle Sandoval, who is on the city and county’s joint housing task force. “But it’s a start.”
The task force completed a 5-year homelessness plan that projected Port Townsend will need between 312 and 338 additional rental units for low to moderate income residents by 2036.
All units in the 7th and Hendricks Street building will be occupied by households with incomes below 50% of the area’s median income.
Median household income in Jefferson County, according to the 2013 to 2017 U.S. Census, was $51,842. The state’s median income was $66,174. The U.S. figure was $56,267.
The new building will also include an early childhood education classroom and a childcare center and will set aside housing for developmentally disabled persons living with behavioral or mental health conditions, families with children and domestic violence survivors.
The Federal Home Loan Bank of Des Moines, Iowa selected OlyCAP to receive a $500,000 Affordable Housing Program grant for the project.
In addition, the state Department of Commerce selected OlyCAP to receive $2,936,884 in Housing Trust Fund financing.
“Conceptually, affordable housing is very simple,” said Dale Wilson, the executive director of OlyCAP. “But, in practice it is confoundingly complex and competition for funding is very competitive. 7th and Hendricks Housing, including the planned early childhood and childcare spaces, will require nearly $14,500,000 to complete. So, obviously, we are not at the financing finish line, but we are rapidly moving toward it.”
OlyCAP has an application pending with the Washington State Housing Finance Commission for $10 million in Low Income Housing Tax Credit funding. When that funding comes through, OlyCAP will still need to raise around $300,000, Wilson said.
7th and Hendricks will be the first affordable multi-family housing to be constructed in Jefferson County in over fourteen years, according to Wilson. The last affordable housing development was OlyCAP’s 2006 development, South Seven Senior Village, located in Port Hadlock.
“The answer to homelessness is to have more homes,” Wilson said.
The architecture firm, Third Place Design Cooperative and local architect Richard Berg are taking on the design of the building. It will feature up to four ground floor units as live–work art spaces. The second and third floors will include living units and common space. It will also incorporate local art into the building design.
It will be built on a half-acre parcel that once belonged to Jefferson County, located in the Castle Hill shopping area, next to Jefferson County Departments of Community Development and Public Health. The parcel was once a gravel parking area, but was recently paved and the county entered into an agreement with Jefferson Healthcare to use the area as overflow parking for hospital employees. After OlyCAP proposed the project, the Jefferson County Board of Commissioners approved the sale of the parcel to OlyCAP on Sept. 8. The commission also released $75,000 from the county’s affordable housing fund—collected from real estate transaction recording fees—to help OlyCAP demonstrate to federal agencies that it has support and funding to get started.
The building will also include a common playground and recreation area, a covered parking area with apartments above, access to transit, medical care and shopping due to its location in the QFC shopping area, and on-site supportive services from OlyCAP and its partners: Discovery Behavioral Health, Safe Harbor and Olympic Neighbors.
